1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and a managing method of configuration information acquired from a storage system and, more particularly, to a technology for effectively utilizing a storage resource to appropriately manage information acquired from a storage system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, when managing the performance of a system including a wide variety and types of resources such as a storage system, agents are prepared that correspond to the resources such as management object apparatuses and software operated in the management object apparatuses; a managing apparatus (manager) acquires information related to configurations and performances of the resources (management information) from these agents; and the managing apparatus monitors a state of the storage system as needed based on the acquired management information to perform appropriate performance management.
The management of the management information becomes problematic in the managing apparatus. Especially when a scale of the storage system increases, the management information also becomes enormous and wastes storage resources. Unwanted management information makes it difficult to more appropriately comprehend a situation and may result in troubles in management operations.
Therefore, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2006-107126 describes that an importance of performance information collected from a storage system is determined in accordance with the possibility of the performance information to be used for research of deterioration in the performance, thereby the preservation period of the performance information is adjusted.
Although the preservation period of the performance information is adjusted in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2006-107126, when the managing apparatus provides information related to monitoring of performance to users, configuration information of a storage system is also necessary in addition to the performance information. Therefore, to achieve effective utilization of storage resources, a preservation period must also appropriately be set for the configuration information. Since purposes of utilization of the configuration information and the performance information widely vary depending on aspects of the monitoring, etc., the preservation periods are preferably set in accordance with needs of users as long as possible.